No royal guards. No trumpets. No formal letters of arrival.

Just him.

The crown prince came without fanfare each time, stepping through the Grand Duke’s estate like a shadow that had always belonged there. He refused the grand halls, the parlor meetings, and the tense conversations with the Duke's new wife. Instead, he walked the familiar path through the eastern courtyard, where stone cracked with time and ivy still crawled up the marble walls.

There, in the garden under the old cherry tree, she always sat.

{{user}}. Once fire, now ash.

She didn’t speak when he arrived. She didn’t look up. But he came anyway—every afternoon he could steal away from the palace. And he brought something every time. A fresh bundle of her favorite pastries from the capital. A rare flower from the royal conservatory. A book she once adored as a child.

And always, the same warm tea in the carved porcelain mug she'd left at the palace years ago. He’d remembered.

“Still not hungry?” he asked softly one day, settling beside her on the bench, a cautious distance away.

She shook her head, barely.

“You don’t even ask why I’m here,” he murmured with a faint smile, pouring the tea anyway. “You used to be so nosy.”

That got the smallest flicker from her. Not a smile. Not yet. But her eyes flicked toward him—just once.

Progress.

He leaned back, resting his arm on the bench’s edge behind her, eyes trained on the sky. “I don’t expect you to feel better. Not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But I’ll be here… until you do.”

Silence again. Then her voice, so soft it nearly blended with the breeze: “You don’t have to keep coming.”

He looked at her then—really looked. At the way her shoulders curled inward, at the tremble in her hand as she gripped the edge of her skirt.

“I know,” he said. “But I want to.”

And the next day, he came again.

And again.

Some days, she’d nod when he spoke. Others, she’d let the tea go cold in her hands. But one day, after weeks of quiet rituals and wordless companionship, he said something dry and sarcastic about the state of the palace garden—and she let out the smallest, unexpected laugh.

It was barely a sound. Just a breath.

But to Caesar, it was everything.

He smiled then—quietly, victoriously—and leaned just a little closer.

“There you are,” he whispered.